Northern Trails Volume 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1908 Excerpt: ... little bandits seemed to hunt in packs, like wolves; and while the big salmon was chasing one of their number, the others would flash in and gobble up all the uncovered tidbits. They would even steal under the mother salmon and snatch away the eggs as they were laid, till the old male came surging back and scattered them like a puff of smoke into their unseen dens. At last, however, the eggs were all laid, and covered up safely where even the parrs could not find them; and spite of all losses, there were thousands enough left in every nest to warrant a full supply of young salmon. Then scores of the great fish, which had grown lank and dingy and faint from their five months' fast and their tremendous efforts in running up the river, rested awhile, lying like logs over all the shallows, until the nights grew intensely still and over the quiet pools the ice began to tinkle its winter warning. A subtle command ran along the river, which our salmon, like all other fish, seemed to obey without knowing why or how they did so. One morning they all turned in the current at the same moment and went speeding back to the sea, leaving to the little brook the task of hatching their offspring. And the little brook, which was used to such things, at once took up the work, singing to itself the same glad little song that it had crooned for a thousand years over the hidden cradles of all the young salmon it had ever brooded. The winter passed slowly; a current of fresh water passed continually over the hidden treasures; and when the ice broke up in the spring there was a general breaking up down among the eggs in the gravel nest. Something stirred vigorously within an egg lodged between two white pebbles; the covering broke and out glided Kopseep, a tiny male salmon. In an ...